MIDEAST TURMOIL: SUCCESSION; 6 Men Who Could Be Contenders to Lead the Palestinians if Arafat Goes

Yasir Arafat has remained the Palestinian leader for more than 30 years in part by not cultivating a long-term lieutenant, avoiding a threat to his pre-eminence by dividing up power beneath himself and encouraging rivalries among his top political and security aides.

That strategy has also left him without a clear successor.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called Mr. Arafat a terrorist and wished him exiled. President Bush has harshly criticized Mr. Arafat, but the United States has so far blocked any Israeli move to harm him.

Some senior Israeli security officials and Palestinian politicians argue that there is no alternative to Mr. Arafat, who they say would dominate Palestinian affairs in the West Bank and Gaza even from exile. His death, they say, could bring on bloody civil conflict. It could also lead other Palestinian factions outside Mr. Arafat's organization, like the militant movements Islamic Jihad and Hamas, to vie for prominence.

Despite Mr. Arafat's maneuverings, a varied, experienced group of potential leaders waits in the wings. They include older men who lived decades in exile with Mr. Arafat and younger ones who grew up fighting the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza and studying Israeli society at close hand.

If the objection to Mr. Arafat has been his involvement in terrorist activities, few among these leaders -- most of whom have spent years in Israeli jails -- would be exempt from similar charges. But none have Mr. Arafat's combination of international standing, broad constituency, financial resources and the raw power of guns.

Mahmoud Abbas, who is known as Abu Mazen, has long been known as Mr. Arafat's No. 2. Along with Mr. Arafat, he is one of the few remaining founders of Fatah, first organized in the late 1950's by a group of young Palestinian professionals working in the Persian Gulf.

In 1980 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He is now secretary general, which in the overlapping and somewhat makeshift governing structure makes him the second-ranking Palestinian leader, even though he has no post in the cabinet.

Regarded as a moderate and pragmatic voice, he played a leading role in encouraging contacts between Palestinians and left-wing Israelis as far back as the 1970's.

Mr. Abbas was born in 1935 in Safad, a town in Galilee, and became a refugee in Syria in 1948 with the birth of Israel. In addition to a law degree earned in Damascus, he holds a doctorate in history from the Moscow Oriental College; his topic was Zionism. He was an important figure in the negotiations leading up to the Oslo accords and is regarded as having good contacts with both Israelis and Americans.

Marwan Barghouti

Politician, 42

Marwan Barghouti is now the second-most-popular Palestinian leader after Mr. Arafat, according to a recent poll that placed his support at 19 percent, compared to Mr. Arafat's 35 percent. It has not hurt Mr. Barghouti's standing that he is once again in an Israeli prison, having been arrested in April on accusations of masterminding terrorist operations by Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement.

Until the current conflict, Mr. Barghouti, who is fluent in Hebrew and English, had close ties to Israelis and a growing reputation as an advocate of reconciliation. A wry and subtle man given to blue jeans and leather jackets, he has positioned himself as the common man's alternative to corrupt, aging ministers around Mr. Arafat whose roots in the West Bank are not as deep.

Mr. Barghouti, who is 42, was raised in a West Bank village outside Ramallah and is a member of a large, well-known clan. He logged six years in Israeli prisons, even before his recent arrest, having first been arrested by Israel at 16.

He was deported in 1978. He returned five years later, became chairman of the student council at Bir Zeit University -- where much later he earned a masters in international relations -- and was then deported again. He returned to the West Bank in 1994 under the Oslo peace accords, winning a seat in the Palestinian Parliament and the office of general secretary of Fatah in the West Bank.

Mr. Barghouti has always called himself a political leader, not a military one. He has advocated violence only against Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza, insisting that once Israel evacuated those territories, the warring peoples could live in peace.

Muhammad Dahlan

Security official, 40

At 40, Muhammad Dahlan is among the youngest of the senior Palestinian leaders. In anticipation of Mr. Arafat's reorganization of his government, he resigned recently as chief of the preventive security forces in Gaza, and is seeking a job as a senior political adviser to Mr. Arafat, which would broaden his portfolio while insulating him from criticism if his old force begins to crack down on Palestinian militants.

The move is in keeping with Mr. Dahlan's reputation as a sophisticated politician. Mr. Dahlan says he was jailed 10 times by Israel, for a total of six years, but Israeli officials say his jail time was considerably less.

He was deported in 1987. ''The Israelis deported me to Jordan,'' Mr. Dahlan said in sketching his résumé during an interview in November. ''The Jordanians deported me to Egypt. The Egyptians deported me to Iraq.''

It may seem paradoxical, but one of Mr. Dahlan's assets is that he has excellent relations with Arab states, and solid ties as well to American and even some Israeli officials.

Mr. Dahlan speaks English and began studying Hebrew when he returned to Gaza in 1994. Since then, he has struggled to extend his influence beyond Gaza.

Ahmed Qurei

Economic adviser, mid-60's

Ahmed Qurei, better known as Abu Ala, is the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and regarded as one of the main authors of the Oslo agreement.

He was born to a wealthy family in 1937 in Abu Dis, on the Mount of Olives, then an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He is regarded by some Palestinians as an aristocrat rather than a revolutionary. Much of his activity has been in the economic sphere, and he has been the mainstay of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction, the main development agency.

He joined Fatah, Mr. Arafat's mainstream faction, in 1968 and was director of foreign investment for the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Mr. Qurei led the Palestinian delegations to the secret negotiations that led to the Oslo agreement in September 1993, and to talks afterward on its implementation.

He has been critical of corruption in the Palestinian Authority and the cabinet. Under the Basic Law -- passed five years ago but only just signed by Mr. Arafat -- he is officially designated as the person to take over as president of the Palestinian National Authority.

Jibril Rajoub

Security official, 49

Jibril Rajoub, the gravel-voiced, pragmatic chief of preventive security in the West Bank, has for years had the advantage and burden of being one of Israel's favorite Palestinians. Lately this distinction has become a millstone, though Mr. Rajoub retains a strong geographic power base around Hebron, where he grew up.

First arrested at 15, Mr. Rajoub, who just turned 49, was sentenced to life in prison in 1970 for throwing a grenade at a convoy of soldiers, then released in a prisoner exchange with the P.L.O. He served a total of 17 years in Israeli prisons before being deported to Lebanon in 1988, during the first intifada.

He became a close lieutenant of Mr. Arafat and spent seven years in exile with him before returning to the West Bank. Mr. Rajoub, who speaks Hebrew and English, has strong ties to American and Israeli security officials, having taken part in trilateral meetings for years.

But Mr. Rajoub's security compound, paid for at least partly by the United States, was shelled during Israel's incursion into Ramallah in March. Without accusing Mr. Rajoub directly, Israeli officials later claimed to have found disguises linking the office to suicide attacks.

Mr. Rajoub's popularity has declined in the West Bank, and it is not yet clear what role he might play as Mr. Arafat reorganizes his government in response to American pressure.

Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, the main Islamic fundamendalist organization, is the most charismatic rival to Mr. Arafat functioning outside the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Crippled from a childhood injury, he is frail, uses a wheelchair and speaks in a high squeaky voice.

But his uncompromising denunciations of Israel from his spartan headquarters in Gaza thrill many and inspire suicide bombers.

Sheik Yassin calls for the recovery of historic Palestine, that is, the abolisment of the State of Israel, and the establishing of an Islamic state.

His early origins are unclear, but he was born around 1937 and became a refugee in the cramped, squalid Gaza Strip with the birth of Israel in 1948. Although lacking in formal religious education, he was strongly influenced in his youth by Ikhwan -- the radical Muslim Brotherhood founded in Egypt -- and became a compelling preacher.

He founded the Islamic Center in Gaza in 1973, which soon controlled all religious institutions there.

In 1991 he was sentenced to life plus 15 years on charges of abetting terrorism, but was released in a prisoner exchange in 1997 for Mossad agents caught in Jordan trying to assassinate a Hamas official by pouring poison in his ear. Sheik Yassin was greeted as a hero on his return to Gaza.

Correction: September 17, 2002, Tuesday An article on June 14 about potential successors to Yasir Arafat and one on Aug. 15 about the indictment of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who is being tried by Israel on murder charges, misstated the history of his arrests and deportation. He was first arrested in 1978 at the age of 19, not 16. He was deported once, in 1987, not twice, and returned to the West Bank in 1994, not 1993. (A reader reported the errors by e-mail on Sept. 2; this correction was delayed for fact checking.)